


what's missing from this life

by Imkerin



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Borussia Dortmund, Broken Soulbonds, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8196625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imkerin/pseuds/Imkerin
Summary: Klopp’s smart, obviously, he’d never-- he’d never say anything on the record that would make it obvious to anyone who didn’t already know, just to be safe.  But that’s about how he’d let them know it was really happening, the first time. Marco remembers that night in weirdly vivid dreamlike flashes, going down long yellow hallways and coming out of them the next morning with his best friend lodged in his head.(past one-sided Götzeus, some ptsd-ish reactions, brief Marco/omc)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ascience](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ascience/gifts).



Lewy catches up to him just before the door, because of course he does. From the way he’d been running when he’d turned the corner down the hall, he’d been in a real hurry to make it, which means, pretty much, that he knows everything. So Marco doesn’t bother smiling when he turns around, because Lewy knows him well enough to pick out a fake that obvious from a mile away, anyway. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Lewy says again. He smiles even though Marco isn’t, that kind of dumb sweet goofball look he’s so good at, but it doesn’t last. “So you heard that,” he says. It’s not a question but Marco nods anyway, quick and jerky -- but he’s not going to apologize for listening in and Lewy doesn’t stop to wait for him to. “It’s not because of you, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Marco says. Objectively, he knows why it is: he’d felt it through the door, when Klopp was laying it out for Lewy just now, the whole story of the hot mess of Marco’s life spread across the tactics board, his game a man down and running low on subs. He’s specifically not thinking about it, though, has it wrapped up and shoved into the back of his mind. The therapist they’ve been making him see for the last two weeks calls that _compartmentalization_ but he doesn’t want to think about that either. 

So, yeah: he knows Lewy isn’t going to extend, that they’re going to lose him too, end of the year, but he isn’t going to talk about it and he thinks probably Lewy will give him a fucking break on this, especially now. “‘Course,” he says, dragging up a half-grin from somewhere for him. “I know you and Anna have a great thing. Can’t throw too much awesome in one mix.” That’s even true, as far as it goes; Klopp must really have been desperate, to think of doing something so goddamn dumb as asking Lewy if he’d break his bond like that, but Marco can’t think why. He’s been doing-- okay. He’s been doing okay.

Lewy kind of looks like he wants to touch him, but it’s been beaten into everyone that they’re not allowed for the next few weeks thoroughly enough that he doesn’t even start to reach for a hug or a slap on the shoulder. “Right, yeah,” he says instead. He glances down and digs around in the gym bag slung over his shoulder for a few seconds until he surfaces with a bar of chocolate: a real one, Marco recognizes the wrapper from Piszczu’s kid’s lunches, and not the insane unsweetened carob shit he usually turns up with. He rips it open and breaks it in half, offering the bigger piece to Marco.

Half a candy bar wouldn’t mean that much from anyone else, but -- Lewy takes a bite of his and makes an expectant noise, his smile gone just a little sly -- Marco figures, from Lewy, it’s some huge kind of concession. He takes the chocolate, careful not to let their fingers brush, and bites into it. Thing is, it’s only been a couple days now since his sense of taste started coming back, and it’s sweet and rich and powerful, almost too much, like getting tackled right on top of an already bone-deep bruise. Marco swallows it down anyway because Lewy meant well. “Thanks, man,” he says, and jerks his head toward the door a little. “I should, y’know.” 

“Sure,” Lewy says, muffled around his illicit mouthful. “Listen, if you need anything.”

“Yeah,” Marco says. He doesn’t point out that Lewy already said no.

 

He mostly stays at home for the rest of the summer because it’s easier. He knows Marcel and Robin think he’s sulking like a brat, and he’d been half worried that they were going to do some kind of dumb intervention thing when he’d said he was going to skip their usual trip, but it’s not like he can _tell_ them about any of it. Which sucks, because he is, frankly, bored out of his mind with solo workouts and single-player FIFA, and he wouldn’t mind having someone to bitch to about how much his life sucks but his options for that are limited to: one, Klopp, which -- no. Two, the club therapist, who he would honestly prefer to see somewhere on the other side of never because he keeps trying to sucker him into heartfelt discussions about his feelings instead of just telling Marco when he’ll be good to go for team training again. Three, the bond physio who he’s only said maybe ten sentences to in his life, most of them when he was out of his fucking mind on inducing drugs. Four, Lewy, which might have been okay except he’s off doing something ridiculous with Anna for the last week of their time off, probably in penance for that half bar of chocolate. Five, Mario, which isn’t really an option at all.

(Six people is already a lot to keep a secret, Marco knows that, but if he starts thinking about it, about the idea of people, the fans, finding out what they’d done (what _he'd_ done), he gets this feeling like there’s spiders crawling out of his stomach and up into his throat and he just doesn’t want to deal with that. They probably won’t find out, so it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to think about it, so he just doesn’t.)

So he’s not doing much, just playing this one pathetic game he invented a while back which involves juggling a ball next to a sinkful of dishes and seeing how long it takes until he breaks something, when his phone rings at full-volume across the room at just the wrong time and he accidentally kicks the ball directly into a pile of old mugs -- which, long story short, he doesn’t get to it until after the voicemail notification starts to flash. 

It’s Kloppo, and he just says, “Marco, come in tonight for your medical, alright?” and hangs up but it’s enough to make Marco go suddenly lightheaded as if he’d been locking his knees too long or standing in the sun all day. Klopp’s smart, obviously, he’d never-- he’d never say anything on the record that would make it obvious to anyone who didn’t already know, just to be safe. But that’s about how he’d let them know it was really happening, the first time. Marco remembers that night in weirdly vivid dreamlike flashes, going down long yellow hallways and coming out of them the next morning with his best friend lodged in his head. That time he’d talked to them about it first, serious and face to face, one hand on each of their shoulders, looking down at them with that one particularly stern careful look of his, and Mario had been right there at his side, breathless, waiting.

This time he doesn’t even know who it is. Probably not Lewy, because he’d have said if he’d changed his mind and came back, Marco is pretty sure, and as far as he knows no one else in the squad is hypersensitive enough or a close enough natural match to him to force a bond. But maybe something changed during the season enough to show up in analysis during medicals. That happens sometimes, though not that often. 

Or maybe it’s just one of the new guys. He hasn’t been paying enough attention to that, to club business and transfer shit; not as much as he should, he knows it. Everything just -- got kind of lost in his other shit. It’s a bad excuse when they’re giving him vicecaptaincy and everything and it’s only his second season back, but there it is. 

He flicks through his phone, taking a look at their profiles on the club site like he was just a fan still: Mkhitaryan, Papastathopoulos, Aubameyang. They all look okay enough, he guesses, though he still feels a little distant and detached from the idea in a way that he knows isn’t really right, which is stupid, it is just fucking stupid. He’s had long enough to get over this. It doesn’t even ache any more, the empty space where they’d cut them apart is just empty, not-- fuck. He puts the phone down and goes to take a shower to wash the old coffee and dish soap off of him.

 

Klopp meets him there outside physio, greeting him with a firm slap on the shoulder that makes Marco jump a little just because it’s been fucking ages since anyone touched him, so long that he isn’t used to it anymore, that he’d almost forgotten how much he’d used to like it. He doesn’t miss the worried frown that wrinkles Kloppo’s eyebrows together, though. “I’m fine,” he says, hoping to head off whatever lecture is brewing.

“Marco,” Klopp says anyway. The hand settles back on Marco’s shoulder from where he’d started to pull away, heavy, solid, anchoring, and his other comes up to rest on Marco’s other shoulder, framing him there. “You know this isn’t mandatory, what I’m asking from--”

“Yeah,” Marco says, interrupting maybe a little rudely. “Yeah, I know.” Because of course it’s not mandatory, it’s shady as hell, it’s-- he’s actually still not really sure if it’s legal or not, inducing, _exploiting_ bonds like this. Mario had tried to look it up once, but apparently nobody in FIFA had ever _made_ official rules for this kind of thing, nobody had ever thought anyone would actually do it, and if there was any kind of law that applied to football in the legalese bullshit of the rest of the stuff they’d found about corporations and trading stocks and shit, neither of them had been able to understand how. “I’m fine with it, I--” He chokes on saying _I want to_ , because god, he’d wanted it before, way more than he’d ever been supposed to-- and look how that had turned out the second he’d let it slip. “I want to do what I can,” he says instead, knowing it’s a weak-ass recovery.

Klopp knows too, judging by the way his frown deepens into a real scowl for an instant. His grip tightens on Marco’s shoulders as he stares down at him, and Marco’s starting to think he’s fucked it up good and proper and Kloppo’s going to call the whole thing off, but then he just sighs a little and pulls Marco into the first hug he’s had since -- fuck, since Wembley. It almost stings a little, being so close to him, even though it’s just Kloppo. But it’s in a good way, and Marco can’t help leaning into him just a little at the feeling of one of Klopp’s hands leaving his shoulder and roughly tousling his carefully restyled hair. He doesn’t complain.

 

He’d kind of thought, assumed, that it was going to be the new midfielder, just because -- well, because that’s how it had been before, him and Mario next to each other on the field, leaning on the sensory awareness they weren’t supposed to have to push _better_ into best, the way the bond had made them feel like two parts of one body in ways beyond making linking up simple like breathing. Had made Marco feel like that, anyway. 

But it’s not him, waiting alone in the bond management room; it’s the striker, the one from Ligue 1, the one who’s supposed to be faster than Bolt. Aubameyang, he’s pretty sure. Marco remembers that much, but not much else except that his smile in the signing photoshoot on the club website had been wide and almost disturbingly genuine. He’s got headphones on, absorbed in something on his phone, and only glances up when Marco’s shadow falls across him.

Behind him, Kloppo makes an exasperated noise. “Where’s Braun?” he asks.

Aubameyang pushes back his headphones and clicks off the music after only a couple notes, not enough for Marco to guess what it was. “He went,” he says, and gestures vaguely at the door with an apologetic shrug.

“Right,” Klopp says. He pats Marco’s shoulder again, giving him a gentle shove a couple steps further into the room. “I’ll find him.” The door shuts behind him with an unforgiving _thunk_ and then it’s just them. 

It should probably be awkward, being stuck in a tiny room with a guy you don’t know beyond his picture, a guy you’re about to get a still-possibly-illegal and definitely undocumented bond with, but-- somehow it’s not that bad. Aubameyang is looking at him with the same curiosity and it’s just, it’s okay. Something eases deep down inside Marco’s chest for the first time since he’d heard Klopp’s voicemail, just a little. “Hey,” he says. His grin is a little crooked but he figures Aubameyang will probably understand, considering they’re equally deep in the same weird-ass shit.

“Hey,” Aubameyang says, after a little bit. “Marco, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Marco says. “Um.”

He smiles; somehow, impossibly, it’s even brighter in person. “‘Auba’s good.”

“Auba,” Marco says.

“Yeah,” Auba says. The smile turns into a grin turns into a laugh so smooth, so seamlessly Marco finds himself dragged along.

He’s barely got himself back together again before there’s footsteps outside the door and Kloppo and the doc come back in. Marco feels this weird twinge of what’s almost resentment that he doesn’t understand but doesn’t have time to try to work out before the two of them, him and Auba, are being shooed into the big plush leather chairs at the edge of the room.

“You’re alright with this,” Klopp says to Auba in English.

“Yeah, yes,” Auba answers. “Okay.”

“Marco?” 

Marco fights back the urge to lick his lips. Somehow despite everything his first instinct is to just agree, but, god, these fucking chairs -- the last time he was in them, they’d -- “Yes,” he says, before he can second guess himself into running out into the hall and maybe not stopping until he got halfway to Gelsenkirchen.

The doc says something to Kloppo that Marco doesn’t really listen to, doesn’t really hear, and they keep talking for longer than he thinks is probably necessary, but --

“Marco,” Auba says from next to him, quiet, almost a whisper. It cuts through everything anyway and Marco looks over. He’s holding out his hand across the little gulf between their chairs and Marco doesn’t think, he just reaches out and takes it. It feels good, his skin, his touch, whatever: it feels real, and Marco concentrates on that.

Maybe he concentrates a little too much because the needle going into his other arm is a complete surprise and he yelps _”Shit,”_ at the quick pinch of pain, which makes Auba _giggle,_ which, god damn it, makes _him_ laugh again, just -- the way Auba’s face lights up like that -- and then the doctor’s got the second needle in Auba’s arm and he makes a ridiculous face about it but doesn’t full out embarrass himself like Marco had.

“They’re ready,” the doc tells Kloppo, who gives them one last heavy, searching look. 

He must be okay with whatever it is he sees, because he nods and leaves them there with a “Good night, boys,” that’s bizarrely normal and not all that much different than how he sounds when he’s banishing guys to their hotel rooms.

Marco curls his fingers in between Auba’s, feels Auba squeeze back, and then just lets it take him.

 

He doesn’t remember much about that long night, either, mostly just Auba’s hand in his the whole time, holding him steady -- still tangled together when they stumble out of the physio department sometime too early to be morning yet. “God,” Auba says -- or thinks, or feels. Marco’s not quite sure, it’s all tossed together still, the soulbond so fresh and new between them, strong enough that it makes a little hard to concentrate on anything else. “I didn’t know it would be like that.”

“I did,” Marco says. He doesn’t mention that he vaguely remembers a whole lot more puking last time.

Auba leans against him a little, a casual touch that leaves him aching -- he lets go of Marco’s hand and slides an arm around his shoulder without him having to say a damn thing and fuck, _fuck_ , Marco had missed that. He can feel Auba feeling him feel it and he doesn’t have a fucking clue what to say, because--

“Okay.” Auba bumps him with a swing of his hip hard enough that it nearly knocks Marco over considering his balance isn’t the best at the moment. He grabs at Auba to stay upright, nearly pulls him over, and suddenly they’re both laughing again, at the same time.

“Show-off,” Auba says, after they catch their breath but there’s a weird surge of pleased pride under it, like -- like Auba is actually kind of happy with this, with their weird shotgun bond, with standing here in the middle of the hall at 3 am in a new country laughing with a not-stranger. 

Marco realizes, thinking about it, with a jolt that he does his best to keep away from the Auba-half of him, that -- that _he_ kind of is happy with it. “How am I even a show-off,” he challenges, partly as a deflection, partly because he wants to know and doesn’t want Auba to stop talking or thinking or whichever.

“Oh, hello, I’m _Marco,_ ” Auba says. His imitation is deliberately terrible, enough that it nearly sets Marco off again as Auba really gets into his performance, grinning over at him. “I’ve been everywhere and done everything already and I know everything--”

“I don’t sound like that!” 

“You do, though.” 

That warmth is still there, glowing in his words, up against the rough spots in Marco’s mind, and it just, it feels good. Marco absolutely doesn’t want it to stop, which is, of course, by the law of the universe, why the doctor finally comes out of physio just then to gently separate them and shove them along to the car park. _Asshole,_ he thinks at Auba, and just smirks when it gets him an elbow in the ribs.

 

In the Supercup Auba comes on late, with something like twenty minutes left to go. For a bit it really fucks Marco up, feeling him there, because it’s so different, he moves so differently. Marco’s only got a week of practice with him instead of years. He trips over his own feet, trying to make sense of it, and Kloppo bellows something at him from the sidelines which he just waves off because he already knows he needs to get his idiot head together. Eventually he does, kinda, and then Auba finds him, perfect as anything, and that’s that.

They stick Kehli and Mats and Schmelle in between them for the photos which is probably a good thing because even like this Marco is having trouble not looking at him, not wanting to touch him. He eventually gets to the point where has to do _something_ with his hands because everything is getting to be too much, the joy, the victory, the roar of the wall, and Lewy’s right there in front of him, so he grabs onto him instead. “We won,” he yells at him over the ridiculous noise.

“I was there!”

“So score some goals next time, jackass,” Marco says, shoving at him a little harder.

“You’re on,” Lewy says, leaning back against the push like the rock wall he is. He’s smirking, obviously just joking around, but it still makes Marco remember suddenly that _next time_ is going to be different, that this, all of this, isn’t enough to make Lewy want to stay.

He’s never going to understand it, he thinks, how anyone could want to leave, how they could think anything else could ever be better. But they pass Kehli the trophy and he hoists it up and everyone’s screaming again and Auba’s grin, over there, is as wide as Marco’s ever seen it, and so he kind of stops caring.

 

It’s more or less like that the rest of the time, too -- it _feels_ like it should be easy, flawless, with Auba right there with him, but it kind of is, and kind of isn’t. For instance, Marco keeps forgetting that there’s supposed to be a language barrier. Auba does too, most of the time, but it’s easier for him because there’s dozens of them that he still can’t really talk to without switching half to English, and only one of him for Marco to constantly fuck up with.

They get away with that for over a month, until Auba nets two against Hamburg and Marco is, they both are, so fucking happy about it that they both forget to shut up in the lockers after. 

Kehli catches Marco as they’re leaving and pulls him off to the side a bit before they can get to the mixed zone. He’s got his serious captain concern face on, one Marco hasn’t seen in a little while because Kehli’s been doing his best to really let Mats step up, one Marco’s actually kind of missed, at least when it’s not being aimed at him.

“You doing all right?” Kehli asks, as if they hadn’t just won 6-2 and six times in a row.

“Yeah,” he says.

“You’re getting along well with Aubameyang,” he says.

“Sure,” Marco says. He’s good at sounding effortlessly casual about that, he’s had enough practice, but it still makes him want to kick himself in the ass for needing to. “Everyone is.”

Kehli smiles a little. “I guess so,” he says. “Well, it was a rough summer. Just checking in.”

The cover of having to shuffle over a bit more to let Heno and Ilkay go past gives Marco a second of breathing space. Kehli just-- he looks normal. Earnest, sure, but utterly normal, and not at all like he’s implying the things he could possibly be implying. If he’s trying to send Marco secret messages about _stuff_ , Marco isn’t getting them. “Yeah,” he says again, a little slower. “Okay.”

He stands and waits a little, after Kehli nods at him and goes off with Kevin, but he still doesn’t get it.

 

Also, this: it turns out Auba has a girlfriend, and they have a kid. That’s not weird in itself; Marco knows a ton of guys in love matches with kids, it’s not like it’s rare or anything, especially for footballers, but he’s not soulbonded to those guys. It’s just kind of fucking awkward, meeting them, watching Auba with his family -- he’s so natural, so effortlessly himself with them that Marco is pretty sure that somehow he is the only one aware of the truly enormous elephant in the room. It sucks, but he does his best to hide it.

A while later they’re flopped down on Marco’s couch, recovering together from an unusually awful day’s training. Marco’s half-sprawled over him because they can get away with quite a lot of hanging off each other during the day but since the Kehli incident he’s tried to tone it down just a little bit. Auba’s got his arm around him again, his thumb tracing a slow, half-asleep pattern against Marco’s skin, and Marco says, apropos of nothing, “Did you tell her?”

“Hmm?” Auba says. He feels half asleep-- he _is_ half asleep; he stretches, squirming and arching his back under Marco not quite enough to dislodge him, and yawns. “Tell her?”

“Alysha,” Marco says. “Did you tell her, when they asked you to, you know. With me.”

“Oh,” Auba says. He doesn’t stop touching Marco, doesn’t even feel at all offended by it even though it’s in a very weird and very gray area of possibly none of Marco’s fucking business, why he didn’t, if he _couldn’t_ , bond to her. “No.”

“No?”

“They said to me,” Auba says. There’s a smile in his voice, one Marco thinks he wouldn’t even have to be bonded to him to hear. “They said, ‘Pierre-Emerick,’” and Marco has to shove his face right into Auba’s side to keep from laughing. It’s been months, but Auba’s smiles are if anything even more contagious than that first day, and his imitations worse. It’s a deadly combination. 

“Listen,” Auba starts again, holding back a laugh of his own. “They said, ‘Pierre-Emerick,’ -- no, come on, Marco. ‘Pierre-Emerick, this is _top-secret_ club information. Your mission, should you choose to accept it--”

“Liar!” Marco’s laughing now, can’t help it. He digs his fingers into Auba’s side as revenge, right where he’s most ticklish, and they end up very nearly falling off the couch before Auba finally manages to pin Marco down, mostly by lying on top of him.

Oh, Marco thinks, squashed into his own couch, looking up at Auba -- eyes sparkling, lips just slightly parted as he pants for breath on top of him -- and slams the rest of that thought right into the darkest corner of his mind as fast as he can: Oh _fuck_. Not again.

“Oh?” Auba says.

“You’re fucking heavy, bitch,” Marco says. “Have you been stealing Lewy’s carob balls again?” 

“You’re just weak,” Auba says, but he lets him up, still smiling. Marco packs the relief and the guilt right back in with the horror and gets up to go grab the takeout menus.

 

And this: The second half of the hinrunde sucks. It just fucking sucks, objectively, and it doesn’t even have anything to do with what Marco’s ignoring, because everyone else is fucking up too, usually worse than him.

Maybe it has a little bit to do with it, because it feels like it all started with Bayern. That thought bites deeper than he means it to and he tries to forget it too but he can’t, and he can’t forget what it was like watching him on the right field in the wrong colors, putting that goal past Roman. It fucking eats at him when he’s alone, even though the empty space in his head is so full of Auba now that he isn’t ever _actually_ alone -- it feels like there’s something they couldn’t quite dig out of him, and he hates it, because he knows it’s going to ruin this too. 

Marco scores against Hertha but they fuck it up anyway.

 

There are a couple reasons why he goes to Dubai that winter break and they aren’t all shitty ones. He really has missed hanging out with Robin and Marcel in particular and going out and just having fun in general. Also, they’ve got to start working on being away from each other for more than a weekend, or the summer’s going to be a real pain in the ass and Marco can’t afford that, not this year, not with Brazil coming up. It’s only been a couple days and he’s already starting to hurt with missing Auba: the gap at his side, the distant stretch in his mind, bond pulled so thin that only an awareness too vague to be comforting seeps through.

That leads into the shitty reason, though, which is also the reason he ditched Robin a couple clubs back and waited til now to reinstall all the apps on his burner phone and why he’s here, in some anonymous guy’s hotel room, hands tangled in his hair as he pulls him closer. It’s been a long time since he’s done this, since he’s taken this stupid, huge risk, but that only makes it feel better to do it, to give in. He goes ahead and begs for it too, shameless with the freedom of no consequences and knowing they’ll never see each other again, never even want to, eyes open and lights on bright the whole time so he can see: so he _has_ to focus on this guy inside him who isn’t Auba.

(“Where’d you get to last night,” Robin says later, when Marco meets them for a breakfast that’s really lunch. The scrapes down his back itch uncomfortably under his shirt, the ache in his mind muffled by the aches in his body. “Got lost,” he says, and shrugs. It’s a lie he’s told them more than once, so it’s easy enough for them to believe.)

 

In the spring they go to Munich and they win. By now Marco has pretty much just accepted that the universe mostly wants to screw with his head as much as possible, so it doesn’t throw him too much. It still feels good though, and if maybe he turns Lewy’s shower to freezing cold afterwards he’s pretty sure no one could really blame him. He ought to be getting used to that anyway.

Auba sits next to him on the plane back, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, headphones looped around his neck but not turned on, thin plane blanket tossed haphazardly over him and partially into Marco’s seat, eyes closed like he’s sleeping. He’s not, though, he’s going over the game, slowly, dreamily, picking out moves here and there, sometimes different ones than Marco would have thought about, so he just sits back and listens.

 _We were good_ , Auba thinks to him eventually, remembering Marco’s assist to Heno, the way Auba’d found him, so easy, so sweet, like that first time all over again.

 _Yeah_ , Marco agrees. Without thinking about it he slides his hand under Auba’s blanket, finds Auba’s hand, curls their fingers together -- by the time he realizes what he’s doing, it’s too late to take it back. Auba leans over and rests his head on Marco’s shoulder and actually does drift off, his thoughts going hazy and diffuse and unaware.

Marco watches him. It’s too much not to-- the safe silent darkness of the plane, the way Auba’s lips part just slightly as he dozes. He wants to touch him, he’s so far beyond denying that, has been for months, no matter how he tries to keep it all packed safely away. He could run his finger along Auba’s lower lip, press it into his mouth, over his tongue-- he could kiss him. It would be easy. He wouldn’t even have to move his hand out of Auba’s for that, he could just lean over a bit and do it. But he needs Auba to stay even more than he needs to do that, so he doesn’t, he just sits there and lets him rest.

 

Auba kisses him in Berlin. They’d managed not to fuck that up this time and they’d finished over Schalke, so there’s that, but Marco hadn’t wanted to celebrate second, not like this, not to _them_ , not when he knows what’s coming soon enough. So he’s in a little bit of a mood and mostly thinking about that and not much else when Auba steers them down the long hotel hallway into his room, closes the door firmly behind them, turns around, and kisses him.

It’s too sudden for Marco to appreciate it -- hell, it’s too sudden for him to understand it, he’s barely grasped what’s happening before Auba’s stepping back, uncertainty flickering across his face, through his thoughts, a tinge of deeper fear. It’s not something Marco usually picks up from him, almost never, and it’s distractingly unfamiliar and strange.

“What,” he says. He clears his throat even though he doesn’t need to, scrambling for time. “What--”

“I thought,” Auba starts, bites his lip, tries again: “For a while-- I dreamed, I’ve had this dream--”

“Shut up,” Marco says, “no, shut up.” Auba does, but he doesn’t stop thinking, muffled and worried, and _Marco_ can’t stop thinking, and all the horrible mess of things he’s been trying not to think for half a year -- no, for years -- are trying to break out of their boxes, and it’s all a huge fucking mess suddenly and Marco has no idea what to do so he just does it. Just follows Auba those few more steps into the room and leans up and kisses him again, grabbing his wrist so he can’t try to get away again because if they stop now, if this gets taken from him again, Marco doesn’t think he’s going to survive it.

Auba doesn’t try to get away, though, he puts his arms around Marco instead -- not a hug, but the way you’d slide your hands up someone’s back, tender and sweet, if you were kissing them properly instead of just getting someone’s face mashed into yours. Marco half-laughs into his mouth, incredulous, and turns his face away just a little, enough so that he can breathe, so that Auba’s lips are pressed against his throat, just at his jaw, soft and warm. His breath is a little quick against Marco’s skin and his stubble scrapes where it rubs over Marco’s own. It’s--he doesn’t have words, he can’t name the feel of it. It’s everything. ”Fuck, what are we doing?” he asks. 

“I don’t know,” Auba says, but he doesn’t let go. He kisses Marco again, over his pulse; again, just above his collar, and stays like that for a long time, silent, just resting his head there on Marco’s shoulder. 

Marco’s not sure how long; everything is fuzzy and indistinct, even the touch of Auba’s skin on his that he’s wanted for what feels like an eternity but is in reality, he distantly knows, not even a year. “You dreamed,” he says, eventually, because he’s pretty sure Auba said that.

“About you,” Auba says, hesitantly, so unlike him that it hurts to hear it. His breath tickles just a little but Marco doesn’t dare to move, doesn’t know if he could if he had the courage to. “About this, kissing you, I...”

He hasn’t done this before, Marco can feel that: Auba’s worry, self-consciousness, nervousness strong enough to break through the fog stuck in his head. Never touched a teammate like this, maybe not even another guy. If this were some kind of fantasy it would’ve been so hot but here, now, in real life, he feels-- fucked up and guilty, mostly. He’d been so sure he was hiding it well enough, he’d been so careful to only do anything when they were far enough apart-- but he must have slipped, it must have got through the bond somehow, to mess up Auba’s head this bad. “When?” he says. His voice is still mostly steady, at least. “When’d you dream?” When did I fuck this up, he means and doesn’t say.

Auba’s quiet for a long time more, the bond gone ice cold between them -- Marco’s doing his best to keep himself out of it, but he realizes with a sort of dulled ache that this is the first time he can actually remember Auba shutting him out, too. “Last season,” he says finally, and Marco barely has enough time to think -- _but_ \-- before he goes on: “you were playing-- Real Madrid, away, I saw the game, your goal, I...”

Marco’s lost track of how many times in the last thirty minutes he’s found himself in a world that makes no god damn sense at all. “You weren’t here last season,” he says, because maybe he’s fallen into some kind of alternate universe, he can’t think what else--

“I know,” Auba says. He laughs a little but it isn’t at all like his normal laughter, it’s just-- it’s all wrong, all fucked up, and Marco tugs away a little, just meaning to look at him better but when Auba lets go it feels awful, it feels terrible and he regrets it with a sudden crushing horribleness that spurs him to shove Auba hard, pushing him back a few paces until he’s pinned against the wall, taking advantage of the surprise the blocked bond affords him to push in for another kiss because it might make it worse but at least it’ll make it _different_.

Auba lets him but it’s so weird not being able to feel him that Marco stops too soon, swallowing against the weird lump in his throat. “Auba,” he says helplessly.

“I should have said,” Auba says. He looks like Marco feels, miserable, even with the bond blocked as much as they both can, and that’s, Marco doesn’t know what to do with that. “Before you told them you’d do it with me.”

“You dreamed about me before you got here,” Marco says, because it still isn’t making sense.

Auba reaches out and takes his hand, just gently, staring down at their fingers so intently that Marco looks down too. Auba doesn’t say anything about it, but Marco gets a sudden helpless flash of memory that isn’t his: that night in the physio’s, the way he’d looked so fucked up standing there alone when Kloppo left him there in the doorway, Auba offering his hand, the brilliant biting shock of connection as Marco took it, even before they’d hooked Marco up to the IV. He doesn’t-- he doesn’t remember that part, he remembers walking in with Kloppo and then walking out with Auba but that’s about all. “Sorry,” Auba says, “I--”

“You said yes to them because you wanted to,” Marco says.

“Yeah,” Auba says.

He’s not looking at Marco still, so Marco reaches out and pokes at the bond, just a little, just enough to make Auba look up, startled, and it doesn’t look like he’s lying, it really doesn’t. “It wasn’t a top-secret club mission,” Marco says. The thing about Auba is-- is god, he always makes Marco _want_ to hope, to believe in stupid impossible things against his better judgement. Like now, like this, like thinking that Auba’s always wanted him and Marco didn’t fuck up and force him into it at all.

Auba’s eyes flicker back to their hands, Marco’s fingers still tangled in his, then to his face, searching for something he must find because the bond gently eases, warms to life again. “Well,” he says. “It kind of was that, too.”

“You’re a real dickhead,” Marco says, his voice cracking a little embarrassingly at the edges-- but this time when he goes in for a kiss, Auba leans down to meet him and they manage not to screw it up.


End file.
